Hopeful holidaymakers looking for a spot of summer sun have been warned that foreign getaways will be 'risky' by a leading GP.
Dr Hilary Jones told Good Morning Britain Viewers that despite Government plans to publish a so-called green list of safe countries this week, foreign travel will still come with a serious risk, the Mirror reports.
During his GMB appearance on Wednesday Dr Hilary firmly advised viewers not to holiday in France.
He said: "24,000 cases [in France], the R Rate is about 1, so that would be another 24,000 people contracting the virus from them. So clearly it is a risk travelling to France. At the moment we've got these restrictions in place.
"We did a survey and only 13% of Britons said they fancied going abroad this year. A small minority. And a lot of them are put off by fears of waiting hours and hours in queues at border control -"
Host Susanna Reid interjected as she pointed out: "It seems to me like the place you would be most at risk."
Agreeing, Dr Hilary said: "Well, absolutely."
"Absolutely!" Dr Hilary remarked. "With hundreds of thousands of of people from separate parts of the globe. And only a tiny fraction of the population of the world has been vaccinated.
"So there are new variants of the vaccine are circulating. We know that something like one in 10 in London due to the Indian variant now and we don't know enough about that - whether it's less or more transmissible than the existing variants."
The UK's 'green list' has not yet been confirmed, but it could consist of around 12 destinations, potentially including Malta, Jamaica, Portugal, Barbados, Israel, Morocco, Gibraltar and Grenada, according to travel consultancy The PC Agency's CEO Paul Charles.
*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV
